The New Adventures of Jesus: The Second Coming

I bought one of the originals of these many years ago and lost it. I am very glad to see this republication and enjoy reading the ones I missed. Good stuff!

The New Adventures of Jesus collects forty years worth of Frank Stack's milestone underground comic strip. R. Crumb provides the foreward and Gilbert Shelton the Introduction to the volume. What more could you ask for than three of the great legends of underground comics all joining in on this book. Shelton founded Rip Off Press in 1968 and was soon joined by old friend Stack and his hilarious strip. If you haven't read these strips before they are about, well...Jesus and his adventures in different eras from biblical times right up through the modern day. Jesus is confronted by his father over being too frivolous with his powers after the whole water into wine incident and later, in camel form (because it's very hot in the desert) he encounters his old archenemy Satan. A couple of passing sheiks are perplexed at why the devil is arguing with a camel! Some of the strips are just one-pagers while other stories are quite a bit longer. Once such longer story is Jesus Meets the Armed Services. Jesus is picked up by a couple of MPs who think he's just another hippy avoiding military service. He soon finds himself forced to register for the draft. Needless to say his registration testing is a riot and quite perplexing to those in charge. Even being the Prince of Peace cannot get him out of the registration, despite his repeated protests. He's finally had enough when his head is shaved and brings down a little divine retribution on the draft board office. It's a fantastic story, both funny and poignant with its anti-war message. In other tales, Jesus goes to faculty party at a large university and later visits Hell. It's interesting to see the development of the character and the development of Stack's skills over the many years of the strip. His earliest work is somewhat reminiscent of Sergio Aragones in its simplicity of the drawings. But over the years his work became much more detailed but never lost its social relevancy. It's truly a masterpiece of the underground comics movement and we can all thank Fantagraphics for bringing this material to the masses. Reviewed by Tim Janson